“ERISA litigation continues to flourish thanks to veteran plaintiffs’ attorneys refining their strategies, newcomers entering the ERISA arena using traditional arguments and lawsuits being filed against smaller plans,” reports Robert Steyer in Pensions & Investments’ Courts.

“For the veteran plaintiffs’ attorneys, their lawsuits ‘generally are sophisticated and appear to respond to roadblocks from decisions that have gone against plaintiffs,’ Thomas E. Clark Jr., a St. Louis-based partner and chief operating officer of Wagner Law Group who represents sponsors, wrote in an email.”

“For the new crop of law firms filing suits, “these complaints appear to generally be cookie cutter and borrow from legal theories from earlier lawsuits,” he wrote.”

“Recent defendants include Costco Wholesale Corp., Paychex Inc., KeyCorp, Land O’ Lakes Inc., Estee Lauder Inc., Oshkosh Corp., Automatic Data Processing Inc., MedStar Health Inc., Astellas US LLC, Quest Diagnostics Inc., Universal Health Services Inc., Schneider Electric Holdings Inc., CDI Corp., and CommonSpirit Health.”

“And that’s only since Memorial Day.”

Read the article.

“Despite citing the surge in coronavirus cases and economic fallout from the pandemic in California, Sutter Health failed to persuade a state judge on Thursday to delay the $575 million settlement it reached last December over accusations of price gouging and monopolistic practices,” reports Reed Abelson in The New York Times’ Health.

“Sutter, which has already received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal coronavirus aid, argued it needed three more months to decide whether it should try to abandon the settlement terms. The sprawling health system in Northern California warned that the costs of the pandemic might force it to raise rates for patient care beyond caps set by the proposed settlement.”

“But Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo was not swayed. While sympathetic to concerns over the rising number of infections in California, the judge refused to give Sutter more time, scheduling a hearing next month on the preliminary agreement. Sutter Health could still try to block final approval of the settlement, which also prevents it from forcing insurers to include all of its health facilities in insurance policies rather than coverage for some.”

Read the article.

“Once parties agree to arbitrate, courts generally defer to the arbitrator’s judgment regarding resolution of a dispute,” discuss Jim Archibald, Amandeep S. Kahlon & Luke D. Martin in Bradley’s BuildSmart Arbitration. “The prevailing approach in many states is to not set aside an arbitration award unless the arbitrator clearly exceeded his or her authority and to exercise every reasonable assumption in favor of the validity of an award. The Minnesota Court of Appeals recently confirmed this view in Faith Technologies, Inc. v. Aurora Distributed Solar LLC.”

“In that case, the court upheld the arbitrator’s award for equitable relief, despite the parties’ contract prohibiting the arbitrator from providing any equitable remedy. The court found the parties’ stipulation to arbitrate all disputes effectively waived the contractual prohibition on equitable relief, especially where the equitable claim for abandonment was pled and not objected to until after the final award.”

“In 2016, Aurora hired Biosar to design and construct solar-power generators for a project in Minnesota. Biosar hired Faith Technologies to provide labor, materials, and services for the project. The EPC contract between Aurora and Biosar permitted arbitration to resolve disputes arising out of the contract but prohibited the arbitrator from ‘awarding nonmonetary, injunctive, or equitable relief.'”

Read the article.

“The court opined that a $1.1 million judgment for Vernon and Donyell Walters was too high and that the trial court will have to try to find a more appropriate figure,” reports John O’Brien in Legal Newsline.

“The $1.1 million figure, itself, was a reduction from the jury’s original $2.8 million verdict, which the trial judge noted was more than what the Waters had asked for.”

“Vernon Walters hired Tadd Parsons to represent him and his wife in a lawsuit against Kansas City Southern Railway Company, but it was dismissed with prejudice in 2010 for failure to prosecute, failure to comply with discovery obligations and fraud upon the court.”

“Parsons did not relate what had happened with the case to his clients. Three years after its dismissal, with the Walterses believing the case was still pending, Parsons fabricated a settlement offer of $104,000 from KCSR and advised them to take it.”

Read the article.

“A federal prosecutor was wrongfully arrested when cops slapped the cuffs on her for advising her boyfriend of his legal rights during a drunk-driving stop, a new lawsuit alleges,” reports Priscilla DeGregory in the New York Post’s Metro.

“Assistant US Attorney Bianca Forde was arrested on Nov. 30 when her boyfriend Joseph Paul got pulled over for suspected drunk driving in Midtown Manhattan and was asked to take a Breathalyzer test, according to a Manhattan civil suit filed against officers Fidel Hernandez, Christophe Williams and Weigand, whose first name was not included in the suit.”

“Forde, the passenger, allegedly said at the time ‘I’m a US attorney. I’m his attorney — he doesn’t have to blow.'”

“Paul did anyhow and passed the breath test and wasn’t arrested.”

Read the article.

“A lawyer will stay on the hook for a $300,000 malpractice verdict after walking out on a client who was unhappy with the way settlement talks in a divorce were going,” reports John O’Brien in Legal Newsline’s Attorneys & Judges.

“The California Fifth Appellate District affirmed a Stanislaus County judgment against the Law Office of Leslie F. Jensen, who told her client ‘I’m done’ shortly before the divorce trial was to begin.”

“Jensen wanted Krista Masellis to accept an $800,000 offer, even though valuations placed Krista’s share at $1.5 million or more. Krista had urged Jensen to depose her soon-to-be-ex-husband because she thought he might be hiding assets, but Jensen never did.”

“When Jensen told Masellis she wouldn’t ask for more than $800,000, even though Masellis wanted much more, Masellis told her she didn’t have the client’s best interest in mind.”

Read the article.

“The unexpected deaths of two lawyers and a series of tornadoes don’t excuse the late filing of an expert report on damages, a federal judge in Dallas has ruled,” reports Debra Cassens Weiss in ABA Journal’s News.

“Ruling on Friday, U.S. District Judge Ada Brown said the prejudice to defendant ADT Inc., a security company, outweighed the risk of harm to the plaintiff seeking to admit the late report.”

“The expert initially estimated damages for interference with current and prospective contracts at about $673,000 but later contended that ADT’s wrongdoing caused total damages of about $4.2 million. The later report will not be admitted, Brown ruled.”

“The plaintiff, Premier Electronics, claims that ADT conspired to take over its contract to provide security alarm monitoring services to a new housing development and interfered with prospective contracts in other developments, according to Brown’s opinion.”

Read the article.

“For years, Johnson & Johnson has vowed to appeal each talc verdict it lost, and the company cited a ‘fundamentally unfair process’ and ‘multiple errors’ when jurors in St. Louis ordered the company to pay $4.69 billion to 22 women with ovarian cancer,” reports Eric Sagonowsky in Fierce Pharma’s Pharma.

“Now, an appeals court has reduced that award—but only to $2.11 billion, thanks to J&J’s ‘outrageous’ and ‘reprehensible’ defense of the product.”

“J&J brought 10 arguments in appeals, but the court found that plaintiffs ‘proved with convincing clarity that defendants engaged in outrageous conduct because of an evil motive or reckless indifference.'”

“After reviewing the arguments, the judges found that J&J ‘discussed the presence of asbestos in their talc in internal memoranda for several decades; avoided adopting more accurate measures for detecting asbestos and influenced the industry to do the same; attempted to discredit those scientists publishing studies unfavorable to their products; and did not eliminate talc from the products and use cornstarch instead because it would be more costly to do so.'”

Read the article.

“A federal judge has denied a request by American women’s soccer players to allow an immediate appeal of his decision to throw out their claim of unequal pay against the U.S. Soccer Federation,” reports Ronald Blum in StarTribune’s Loons.

“Lawyers for the women had asked him to enter a final judgment on his decision to dismiss the pay claim, which would have allowed them to take the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.”

“Klauser ruled May 1 the women could not prove discrimination over pay and granted in part the USSF’s motion for a partial summary judgment. He said the union for the women’s national team rejected an offer to be paid under the same pay-to-play structure as the men’s national team’s collective bargaining agreement and the women accepted guaranteed salaries and greater benefits along with a different bonus structure.”

“He also refused to let go to trial allegations the women were discriminated against because they played more games on artificial turf.”

Read the article.

“A coalition of 34 state attorneys general announced on May 19, 2020, that it had secured a settlement with one of the nation’s largest subprime auto financing companies for alleged violations of state consumer protection laws. Under the settlement agreement, the terms of which are discussed in detail below, the auto financing company is required to provide significant monetary relief to consumers, $550 million in total, and substantially adjust its lending practices moving forward,” report Anthony E. DiResta and David L. Haller in Holland & Knight’s Insights.

“Without admitting any liability and to resolve the allegations without litigation, the auto financing company agreed to the entry of a consent judgment with each of the 34 state attorneys general participating in the multistate investigation and resulting enforcement actions. Collectively, those consent judgements require the auto financing company to provide $550 million in monetary relief to consumers, including $478 million in deficiency balance waivers, $65 million in restitution and $7 million in restitution management. The consent judgments do not stop at monetary relief. They also require considerable changes to the auto financing company’s lending practices.”

Read the article.

“A new lawsuit filed in Kansas state court by propane supply company Ferrellgas Partners, an ex-client of Biglaw firm DLA Piper, alleges the firm engaged in ‘strident double-dealing’ that was only revealed when the wrong invoice was mistakenly sent to Ferrellgas,” reports Kathryn Rubino in Above the Law’s Biglaw.

“In July of 2018, the company hired DLA Piper for debt restructuring advice. According to the suit, the work on that matter naturally tapered off by November of that year, but the representation was not formally terminated. However, in November of 2019 Ferrellgas received a $14,000 invoice, signed by Thomas Califano — the same restructuring partner they’d previously worked with — for research about Ferrellgas. During that same time, the company was fielding hostile takeover threats.”

“The lawsuit says that after inquiries from Ferrellgas, DLA returned their client file and that the firm says an internal investigation revealed the client information was not used in connection with work for any other client. But the lawsuit draws the conclusion that the invoice revealed DLA was working for adverse interests.”

Read the article.

“Six months after agreeing to a $575 million settlement in a closely watched antitrust case filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Sutter Health has yet to pay a single dollar, and no operational changes have gone into effect. The not-for-profit healthcare giant was accused of using its market dominance in Northern California to illegally drive up prices,” reports Jenny Gold in Modern Healthcare’s Providers.

“Late last week, Sutter’s lawyers filed a motion requesting that Judge Anne-Christine Massullo of the California state Superior Court in San Francisco delay approving the settlement for an additional 90 days, due to “catastrophic” losses stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Massullo originally was scheduled to rule on the agreement in February, but in April granted an earlier request from Sutter for a 60-day delay in the proceedings.”

“In court documents supporting its request, Sutter argues the pandemic has upended the financial landscape for hospitals and made numerous aspects of the agreement untenable. Last month, Sutter reported an operating loss of $404 million through April, citing declining patient revenue and expenses resulting from the pandemic. System officials said that loss took into account the more than $200 million the system received in COVID-19 relief funds from the federal government via the CARES Act.”

Read the article.

“Following a jury verdict win on January 24, 2020 of $85.23 million in a damages-only re-trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California (the “Court”), the Court ruled late yesterday on all post-trial motions and entered final judgment in favor of WiLAN, maintaining the full jury verdict and denying Apple’s motions for retrial or lowering the damages award (the “Final Judgment”),” was reported in WiLAN’s news.

“The Court also awarded WiLAN an additional amount of $23.75 million in pre-judgment interest. The total award in the Final Judgment stands at $108.98 million and WiLAN is entitled to post-judgment interest from June 16, 2020 until the date this Final Judgment is satisfied. In addition, as indicated in the Court’s Final Judgment, there are additional royalties for products which Apple released during the pendency of the litigation that will have to be accounted for separately.”

Read the article.

“The Fourth Court of Appeals of Texas overturned a jury verdict awarding HouseCanary, Inc. (“HouseCanary”) $740 million in damages for trade secret theft and fraud against Title Source, Inc., now known as Amrock,” reports Mena Gaballah, PharmD and Joshua M. Rychlinski in Crowell Moring’s Trade Secrets Trends.

“Amrock and HouseCanary are competitors in the real estate sector. Amrock provides title insurance, property valuations, and settlement services in real estate transactions. HouseCanary is a real estate analytics company that developed software to determine property values. HouseCanary agreed to provide this software to Amrock, and, according to HouseCanary, Amrock reversed engineered it. After the relationship between the two broke down, Amrock sued HouseCanary for breach of contract and fraud, and HouseCanary counterclaimed for breach of contract, fraud, misappropriation of trade secrets, among other claims. The jury found for HouseCanary, awarding it compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorney’s fees.”

Read the article.

“A total of $26.1 million of the $143 million Merrimack Valley gas explosion class-action settlement was earmarked for payment of legal fees and administrative costs,” report Jill Harmacinski in The Eagle-Tribune.

“And yet, some victims are being asked to pay an 11% fee to get their checks, which are compensation for everything from spoiled food and property damage, to lodging costs, mental anguish and other fallout from the Sept. 13, 2018 gas disaster.”

“The first round of checks was recently issued with an average settlement payment of $8,000. Eleven percent of that payment is $880.”

“As of Friday, a spokesperson for Attorney General Maura Healey said the office had heard from eight recipients about the fee being assessed by attorney David Raimondo of the Raimondo Law Firm. Healey’s office is looking into this.”

Read the article.

“Gov. Steve Sisolak on Sunday called for an investigation into the arrests of several legal observers at a protest against police brutality this weekend on the Strip,” reports David Ferrara in Las Vegas Review Journal’s local news.

“At least seven attorneys and law students who documented interactions with police and demonstrators were taken to jail late Saturday.”

“News of the arrests drew condemnation from public officials and attorneys on social media.”

“Attorneys are trained to ‘take notes and not engage with either side.’”

Read the article.

“The Law Offices of Jeffrey Lohman has faced some significant setbacks in litigation with Navient purporting that Lohman’s office set up TCPA lawsuits in violation of RICO. While no substantive ruling has been entered in that suit yet, the Court has at least preliminarily found that emails between Lohman and his clients are discoverable pursuant to the crime-fraud exception to the A/C privilege,” reports Eric J. Troutman in

“But Lohman’s office had a better day … in a suit in federal court in Missouri.”

“The Johnson case is quite different from the Navient matter in that it is not a RICO case and does not directly challenge Lohman’s (alleged) conduct of encouraging folks to stop payment to create possible TCPA lawsuits. Rather the suit involves the relationship between Lohman and something called Burlington Financial Group, which allegedly took $2,500.00 from the Plaintiff for debt services it (allegedly) never provided.”

“Lohman’s role in the overall transaction appears to be pretty limited.”

Read the article.

“Two decades after Florida reached a landmark legal settlement with tobacco companies, an appeals court is slated to hear arguments Tuesday in a dispute about more than $100 million in payments,” reports News Service of Florida in Florida Politics.

“R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. wants the 4th District Court of Appeal to overturn a ruling that said the company is responsible for making payments to the state related to four brands of cigarettes: Salem, Winston, Kool and Maverick.”

“R.J. Reynolds was part of the 1997 settlement in which cigarette makers agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the state because of smoking-related health costs and, in exchange, received liability protections. An R.J. Reynolds parent company in 2015 sold the four cigarette brands to ITG Brands, LLC, which was not part of the settlement. As a result of the sale, R.J. Reynolds contends it is no longer responsible for making payments linked to the four brands.”

Read the article.

“The bank has asked the U.S. to review demands that any settlement include a guilty plea to a felony charge, according to people briefed on the matter,” reports Matthew Goldstein in The New York Times Business.

“Lawyers for the bank have asked Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to review demands by some federal prosecutors that Goldman pay more than $2 billion in fines and plead guilty to a felony charge…”

“The bank has sought to pay a lower fine and avoid a guilty plea, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are continuing.”

“Authorities in the United States and Malaysia say more than $2.7 billion was diverted from the fund, known as 1MDB, in a scheme that involved the flamboyant financier Jho Low, the country’s former prime minister, and other powerful people. The fund was meant to finance projects for the benefit of the people of Malaysia, but some of the cash went to buy luxury apartments, yachts, paintings and even finance the movie ‘The Wolf of Wall Street.'”

Read the article.

“A state appeals court Wednesday overturned a record $706 million verdict rendered by a San Antonio jury more than two years ago,” reports Patrick Danner in San Antonio Express News’ Business.

“The 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio reversed a trial court’s judgment on real estate analytic firm HouseCanary Inc.’s fraud and misappropriation of trade secret claims against Amrock Inc., a Detroit home appraisal company affiliated with Quicken Loans Inc. Amrock formerly was known as Title Source Inc.”

“The two claims were sent back to a state District Court in San Antonio for a new trial.”

Read the article.